All of Doctor Who, one episode at a time!

Episode 095 – “Counterplot”

We reunite with Sara Kingdom, ordering the Doctor and Steven to be killed on sight. Nothing like a good old fashioned police state. Then we follow the Doctor and Steven as they enter the set of some game show.

Welcome to The 64,000 Quatloo Question!

Sara follows them and we get some very weird 1960s video effects when she enters the platform they’re standing on. The video effect seems to have caused everyone to start bouncing on trampolines an get transported across space. And when I say “everyone”, let me add that I don’t think anyone got Hartnell onto a trampoline for this.

Our heroes end up in a distant galaxy on some unknown world. So it looks like this story, like “The Keys of Marinus” and “The Chase” before it, is turning into a story that’s going to be made up of a number of smaller stories. Which is fine. I like that format.

We find out that Chen is very aware of this experiment and seems to understand that the Daleks are, at best, allies of convenience. He’s apparently aspiring to the goal of being ruler of the universe, as one does. This goal has never made sense to me. I think that people simply don’t understand how freaking big the universe is. As we all know, the volume of the universe is about 1.22×104 Gpc3. This is a number best described as “stupidly large”, and no one would ever be able to control the whole place. It’s just silly. Having your villain aspiring to ruling even a galaxy is silly enough, but this kind of line just always takes me out of the story.

But I digest.

The Doctor wakes up first, realizes he’s pretty far from where he started, and observes that, “The mice couldn’t have done that!” Amusing, though as we all know, mice are hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings, so who can say for sure?

The Doctor, Steven and Sara go wandering off, with the Daleks kind of monitoring the situation. This is impressive as hell considering the distances involved, though again, I’m willing to chalk it up to the writer not really understanding the size of space.

The Daleks show up quickly enough to make one wonder if they have their own transwarp transporter system. They quickly begin to chase after our heroes and some strange invisible monster. As this goes on, the Doctor and Steven talk with Sara, who eventually reveals that Bret Vyron was her brother. Which makes sense, due to…er…the same…last names? I dunno. Anyhow, we end with the TARDIS team being captured by the Daleks.